We need a Supreme Court ruling or law that says if the government doesn’t have a warrant to collect your data, they also can’t buy it from third parties.
We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.
We also need privacy protections so these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.
"Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Maybe it should be illegal?
Then Congress has to pass a law to make it illegal.
There’s obviously something very wrong here, but it’s a dead end to say no one can sell the government info about people. Need a different approach in the vein of outlawing crazy TOSs, keeping user ownership of their data even if used to make a service operate, right to be forgotten, etc.
Telcos are exempt for exactly the reason you mention: phones are really important to daily life and they collect tons of sensitive data as a side effect of normal use.
IMO this is one of the more viable routes to getting this behavior changed: expand Third Party Doctrine exemptions to a lot more services, but to do that we’d have to confront just how much data we’re choosing to share, and whether we’re actually choosing to share it.
Without data protection laws that data isn't your private data, that data is the company's data. And you are free to do whatever you want with your data, and since the company owns this data the company can sell it to the government, it doesn't matter if you consider it to be your private data the company still owns it. Europe has GDPR which clarifies this, the data is yours even if it is stored on company servers, I'm not aware of USA having anything similar except for health data.
So to me it sounds like you'd want USA to create something akin to GDPR.
Or maybe it's not, and we need new legislation specifically targeting this. That's where the Supreme Court comes in: their raison d'être is to resolve ambiguities in existing law.
Got any precedents for this? All examples given in this thread was about the government forcing companies to hand over data, not companies just plain selling it to the government. These companies are already selling this data to other companies, like credit score companies gets a lot of data from banks, so to them selling it to the government as well is just another buyer. Does the fourth amendment really apply to cases like this? My hunch is that it does not, and you wont find any such cases since it is so clear that it doesn't apply that it hasn't even reached a court.
The better solution would be to have laws legislated. However, unfortunately, there is so much gridlock because congress members are just chasing after Ws for their respective parties and minimizing Ls.
1. The data is not yours. It’s the company’s 2. The government is not “search or seizing” the data, they are purchasing it or a license to it. 3. The company is selling it voluntarily, the government is not compelling it.
The fourth does not apply.
It requires searches and seizures to be reasonable.
It also creates requirements for the basis of any warrants that are issued.
It is a series of Supreme Court rulings that infers a general warrant requirement with some exceptions from that text.
A person cannot sell themselves into slavery. Yet we allow the US government to endorse indentured servitude for immigrant labor, because corporations want indentured servitude.
Nor can a US citizen sign away workplace safety rights, legally. Yet we allow US construction companies to rampantly hire off-the-books undocumented labor so that they can freely ignore workplace safety rights, since no one will exist to make claims against them.
It would have been perfectly reasonable for a court to broadly ban surveillance of individuals by telecom companies back in the 1990s, based on the same principles that those courts have willfully violated on behalf of corporations in the other examples above.
Therefore, arguing precedent and consistency is relatively pointless. My point was an exercise in "anything goes, so make the law fit the argument." That's what Chevron would do.
In other words: What's the desired outcome? That corporations cannot wantonly create mass surveillance any more than the government can. So make the law fit the desired reality: extend the 4th amendment to say that privacy is a basic human right and people cannot contractually sign it away any more than they can contractually sign away themselves into forced labor. A clever judge could outlaw H1 visas in the same ruling and get 2 birds with 1 stone.
That’s the key here - these companies are already selling this information. The govt is just saying “cool, we’ll buy it too”.
I'm not going to pretend to know what the ruling would/should be according to the 4th amendment, though.
> Do you really want five unelected, unaccountable lawyers deciding this matter?
No but that's what happens when Congress is so split right now.
The real solution is to not allow the data to be sold to anyone.
The idea that businesses (whether public or private) can't hurt me or my family is absurd.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher-Price#Rock_'n_Play_reca...
[2] https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-frac...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family#Opioid_lawsuits
If the state actually managed to monopolize all violence that would be much better than what we have in practice, with plenty of non-state violence in addition to that instigated by the state, though calling any aggressive use of violence "legitimate" would remain a travesty.
Actually they do. See this for just one of the many ways they have that power:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/21/teen-dies-hours-after...
Statistically zero people make any effort, other than maybe saying the government should limit government data mining. Here is an idea, turn off mobile phone location tracking this weekend.
What, exactly, do you mean by "mobile phone location tracking"?
Your phone provider needs to be able to locate your device to provide voice and data services. You'd need to remove your battery to disable that "phone location tracking." In which case, it's just a lump of glass and plastic. Which might make a good paperweight.
As for "location services" and GPS, I never turn those on.
As I said, the data shouldn't be collected -- at all. That's a regulatory issue, not a technical one.
Making transactions (and even paying informants for information) are and should be within the power of the government.
Also, POTUS is in charge of most federal law enforcement agencies. So it might be possible to handle this at a federal level through an executive order. Obviously, this doesn't have the staying power of a proper law, but it's something.
It isn't unambiguous, though. It isn't hard to see how a lawyer could point out that "and to forever secure the people, their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against all unreasonable searches and seizures under the guise of law" says nothing about purchasing data from a 3rd party. This wasn't really something that would have come up in the 18th century.
Extending the letter to match the spirit is why reflection is built into the runtime of the current constitution.
They wouldn't go for a sensible modern reading but instead stick to gospel like dogma on how it was intended to be read 250 years ago I guess.
Purchasing "data" from a 3rd party is a modern Internet spin, but it's not like the concept is brand new to the law or the legal department.
In all likelihood, the amendments text would look something like:
> Section 1: The fourth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby extended to include information or detail held, owned, or otherwise under the custody of those other than the accused.
> Section 2: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Which then necessitates some accompanying legislation to further clarify. But I'm pretty confident we can get there through legislation alone.
Sure, you’re probably right that it’d be more airtight. It’d also mean an almost herculean effort. It’s probably best to explore other options as well.
While there was issues that got escalated in the past - there was literally civil war over one, the data shows that amount of legislation passed has slowed down considerably recently.
If that's a comment about the bureaucracy working slowly as hell, that is reasonable. If it's about the makeup of the court, I disagree.
Kavanaugh and especially Gorsuch are two you want on the court in this case.
If you don’t put it into law/constitution then a new set of justices could reverse the ruling in the future.
What makes you say that? From what I can tell, Gorsuch doesn't seem keen on limiting law enforcement powers at all. Kavanaugh is a bit of a wild card, but I'd be curious to hear times when he's agreed on limited police powers.
> The new rule the Court seems to formulate puts needed, reasonable, accepted, lawful, and congressionally authorized criminal investigations at serious risk in serious cases, often when law enforcement seeks to prevent the threat of violent crimes. And it places undue restrictions on the lawful and necessary enforcement powers exercised not only by the Federal Government, but also by law enforcement in every State and locality throughout the Nation.
However, no one has gone as far as Utah in requiring warrants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
https://www.wired.com/story/utah-digital-privacy-legislation...
It either shouldn't be collected or if it is then the sale should be prohibited.
The data broker selling your information is not committing a crime, so the situation is not at all comparable.
Users must sign a consent statement to a terms of services agreement. That is a voluntary action where users erode their own privacy protections and surrender their contributions. Anything that happens later is completely incidental and solely between the data owner (which is not the user) and the third party.
This has been the case for decades. I remember before the internet publishers selling their users subscription and preference data to solicitors. People don’t gain new privacy protections where they never existed prior, especially if the absence of expectations is explicit and agreed upon by the user.
Unlike private actors, governmental actors are publicly constrained in their actions and representatives of the will of our society.
If someone volunteers information, it is not a "circumvention" of the subpoena.
Breaking into Google and stealing information for a criminal investigation would be circumventing it.
Irrelevant. Gov wants data, Gov gets a narrowly targeted warrant first. Beyond this lies 4A violations.
No? What are you basing this off of?
Exclusively? That's a novel interpretation of 4A. Where did you get it?
I don't think there's any landmark decision contrary to the interpretation of 4A that I'm putting forth.
As it stands now, the interpretation I am putting forth is the one the government abides by - it can buy data from brokers without warrant if there is no compulsion.
There are tons of case law that have interpreted 4A out to it's currently upheld boundaries - boundaries that aren't well represented by the original wording.
> the interpretation I am putting forth is the one the government abides by - it can buy data from brokers without warrant if there is no compulsion.
You can believe that if you choose. It is curious tho, why you feel a compulsion to keep roping compulsion into it.
Because that is where the current boundaries are at? That is the DHS/DOJs interpretation of 4A, and so far there has not been any successful court challenge of it.
I don't think it is legal for banks to sell their balance information to other private entities either. But if it were, then I think it would be permissible for the government to be one of the buyers.
Your interpretation of 4A is not backed by any legal precedent.
Let's be realistic here.
They'll need a warrant for a wiretap, but tracing contact graph has been open season for as long as I've been around.
Are you aware of the term 'unelected bureaucrat', and do you know how many of them exist? They are accountable to no one. They continually prove to be significant problems.
1. If Bob is selling data that he legally obtained about Alice and legally can sell, it is a search if the government buys that data from Bob, and
2. If the government interviews Bob and Bob gives them data about Alice, it is not a search.
I'm failing to see the distinction you are making.
Also please note-- and I should have made this note in my original post-- I'm. It saying people can avoid data acquisition by 3rd parties. Merely that users frequently give away far, far more than they have to: whenever they install an app that asks for more permission than necessary to function. Whenever they agree to the popup in browsers that as for access to location data or to receive notifications from the site. (I say something about cookies and JavaScript, but many sites are useless without JavaScript and navigating the dark patterns for those sites that allow cookie preferences is ridiculous. A good ad blocker will at least catch some of that though./